Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

Canonical has long made the most popular desktop version of Linux, but actually making money off Ubuntu is easier said than done. When a typical user downloads Ubuntu for free and installs it on a computer with a Windows license that the user did pay for, Canonical gets nothing in the form of payment.

There's nothing wrong with that—this is the open source world, after all, and many people contribute to Ubuntu with code rather than money. But starting this week, Canonical is presenting desktop OS downloaders with an optional donation form.

"Pay what you think it's worth," and "Show Ubuntu some love" are among the messages users will see, and downloaders can direct their donations to specific parts of Ubuntu development. The options are "Make the desktop more amazing"; "Performance optimisation for games and apps"; "Improve hardware support on more PCs"; "Phone and tablet versions of Ubuntu"; "Community participation in Ubuntu development"; "Better coordination with Debian and upstreams"; "Better support for flavours like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu"; "Tip to Canonical—they help make it happen."

By default, the page puts in $2 for each, a total donation of $16. Depending on what you contribute, Canonical shows what else you could buy with that money. Bizarrely, $200 equates to "the price of a pair of sexed Emu chicks." The most you can donate at once is $1,000, or "the price of an eight year-old dromedary camel."

Once you donate, the Ubuntu desktop starts downloading. Or, you can just skip the donation and download the OS for free, just as you always could. For some reason, the donation page is not presented to Ubuntu Server users.

Canonical accepted donations prior to this week, but in a blog post about the move yesterday, Canonical VP Steve George wrote "we're making it easier for people to financially contribute to Ubuntu if they want to."

"By allowing Ubuntu users to choose which elements of Ubuntu they’re most excited about, we’ll get direct feedback on which favourite features or projects deserve the bulk of our attention," he wrote. "We’re letting users name their price—depending on the value that they put on the operating system or other aspects of our work. That price can, of course, be zero—but every last cent helps make Ubuntu better."

Ubuntu isn't the only Linux desktop distribution looking for donations. Linux Mint (which is based on Ubuntu code) does as well, for example. While Canonical gives away its software for free, it is a private company rather than strictly a community project, and some people may not feel comfortable donating to a business rather than a charity.

Although Distrowatch shows Ubuntu as being only the third most popular Linux distribution (after Mint and Mageia), a more extensive and likely more accurate gauge of real-world use comes from a Wikimedia traffic analysis report. Over the most recent 12-month period, Ubuntu accounted for 1.1 billion hits to Wikimedia, with the next-most popular Linux desktop distribution—Red Hat's Fedora—accounting for 36.7 million.

Yet after eight years in business, it's not even clear whether Canonical is profitable. The company has branched out with business products and support, struck distribution deals with desktop hardware vendors, and is eyeing mobile devices, but it doesn't seem to be enough. Witness a recent move to add Amazon search results into Ubuntu's desktop search tool, in order to get money through affiliate links.

Some users were disturbed by the Amazon move, telling Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth so in the comments on his blog. But even users who don't want Amazon search results when they're searching for a file on their desktop may want to support Ubuntu financially. Providing an easy-to-find donation page and the option to direct money to whichever part of Ubuntu development one prefers seems like a reasonable way to raise money without affecting the behavior of the operating system itself.

Promoted Comments

I predict that people will go crazy about this, even though IMO there's no reason to.

I would like to point this out though:

Quote:

Although Distrowatch shows Ubuntu as being only the third most popular Linux distribution (after Mint and Mageia), a more extensive and likely more accurate gauge of real-world use comes from a Wikimedia traffic analysis report. Over the most recent 12-month period, Ubuntu accounted for 1.1 billion hits to Wikimedia, with the next-most popular Linux desktop distribution—Red Hat's Fedora—accounting for 36.7 million.

Currently I use Linux Mint. This is the default user agent string reported to websites by Firefox in Linux Mint:

I'd venture to guess that most/all Ubuntu derivatives say the same. Now, if all Debian derivatives' browsers reported as being Debian, that would be a number to see, since of course it would include Ubuntu + vanilla Debian, among others.

So while I do understand that Distrowatch results are not particularly reliable, the Wikimedia results don't seem at all useful to compare the relative popularity of Ubuntu to other distros. Not that we don't all know that Ubuntu is popular a heck, but I just don't think those numbers are particularly informative.

And to be clear, I'm not on any kind of Anti-Ubuntu crusade -- I'm giving Mint until 12.10 release date to woo me away from Ubuntu, just for fun.

ATM the more likely scenario seems to be that I'll wind up giong back to Ubuntu, but installing Cinnamon from some PPA...

"The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more."

When I first saw the headline, I was rolling my eyes at what I was sure was Canonical figuring out even more ways to monetize their OS, which isn't a bad thing per se, but will wind up alienating some of their users.

Then I saw how they're implementing this. I don't find it obtrusive at all, and much less so than companies that make people fill out forms in order to download their software. Plus, you can let your money do the talking. By popping $5 in the "improve hardware support" option and then dropping $15 on "Improve support for flavours," I'm both supporting them and giving them feedback. It's really a win-win when you think about it.

Is there a way to see what percentage of people's donations fell in what boxes weighted against each total donation? E.G. which "option" is getting the greatest amount of attention?

I installed and used Ubuntu 12.04 as my sole OS for 7 months (started at beta). I found it to be largely a functional OS, and Unity has actually matured nicely. However, the Gnome3 underpinnings made it a bear on notebooks. I have wifi sleep issues that no "fix" fixes, and, for whatever reason, they took away brightness adjustments for battery/AC modes in Gnome3. Ubuntu is just dandy on a desktop, but I only have a notebook, so I'm on Windows 7. I really wanted to make Ubuntu work, and I hope future versions get over some of the hurdles.

Maybe Steam will help get Ubuntu more money, as I'm sure once it releases we will see more people trying Ubuntu.

When Novell was still actively pursuing an enterprise Linux desktop strategy, one of the things that they did was overhaul the Evolution email/calendar client and build an Exchange connector plugin. If memory serves, it never worked reliably.

I'm not sure why Exchange support on Linux is so difficult, but nobody seems to be able to get it right. Kind of surprising, considering how well it seems to work on OS X.

Evolution has had 3 different Exchange connectors. The first one worked with 2000 and 2003 only, and scraped the webmail UI (which was pretty fragile). The second (also pretty fragile) one was based on MAPI and worked with 2007 and could work possibly work with 2010 (although MS deprecated MAPI in 2010). The latest one isn't fully finished yet and works with EWS (Exchange web services), which should hopefully be the most robust method.

The problem now is that Evolution development is really under-resourced, and struggling to keep up with GNOME releases. Suse has stopped supporting the development, leaving behind just a couple of Redhat devs I think. That means the Exchange connector work is even more resource starved.

The situation with Exchange connectors in Ubuntu has been slipping backwards for a while now depending of which version of Exchange you had. It kinda sorta worked up until 10.04. 10.10 fully broke it, and it never really worked after that.

It's like movies that have flopped based SOLELY on it being a dumb ass name. The name of it needs changed to something more appealing. Your all gonna argue with me about it but truly that would make a big enough difference that would warrant changing it.

I have always felt the same. I think having a more conventional sounding name would help. This is technology. Ubuntu just isn't a name that resonates technology. Trying to tell someone you use Linux is hard enough. Then add "Ubuntu" on top of it. You lose anybody but people like Ars users.

12.10 is a little more robust, and you don't have to uninstall apport and nepomuk like 12.04. But I still uninstall nano and thunderbird first thing, but that is cause they suck, not because they are broken.

Give me this for Debian or Linux Mint and then we'll talk. I don't like Shuttleworth very well and I definitely dislike Unity. As a result, I'd rather use Linux Mint Debian Edition or just plain Debian.

I've already paid for an operating system for my laptop. An operating system I didn't want and don't use.Soon I'lll be buying a new laptop and and again paying for an operating system I don''t want and will not use.

I've already paid for an operating system for my laptop. An operating system I didn't want and don't use.Soon I'lll be buying a new laptop and and again paying for an operating system I don''t want and will not use.

It's a donation. You don't have to pay to use it. Plus, you don't necessarily have to buy a laptop with a Windows or Apple OS pre-installed. You can start at System76 (great pricing there IMHO) and work your way down.

"Over the most recent 12-month period, Ubuntu accounted for 1.1 billion hits to Wikimedia, with the next-most popular Linux desktop distribution—Red Hat's Fedora—accounting for 36.7 million"

I think Ubuntu and its derivatives are about 44 percent of the whole Linux desktop. Because according to Wikimedia stats; 1.37 billion hits to Wikimedia from "Linux Other", these are non-Ubuntu (and derivatives) hits, because Ubuntu and (most of) its derivatives identify themselves as "Ubuntu".Regards

That would be a big fat 'nothing' from me then. Seriously, I tried Ubuntu and couldn't get around that 90% of the applications I wish to use don't work on Ubuntu.

When I have invested years using some apps and know how to use them, I don't want to have to look for another option.As to an OS, I'm willing to learn new things because OS's are known to change commands like most people change socks.

Ubuntu has to get the 'compatibility with Windows applications' up to the point where any Windows application can be installed on Linux. As of yet, they haven't gotten to that level.

Add a 'Remove Unity' option for donations, and I'll believe you.. and, I'll donate .. and, Canonical will make tonnes of cash. I'd imagine that there are loads of people like me who have to use Ubuntu, but for whom Unity is so broken that it impedes usability. If I could, I'd move back to 10.04.

I would have considered donating if the donation page was in place for 10.04 .. because it helped me get my job done. Now, I'm just trying to figure out ways to get off of Ubuntu.

Give me this for Debian or Linux Mint and then we'll talk. I don't like Shuttleworth very well and I definitely dislike Unity. As a result, I'd rather use Linux Mint Debian Edition or just plain Debian.

Add a 'Remove Unity' option for donations, and I'll believe you.. and, I'll donate .. and, Canonical will make tonnes of cash. I'd imagine that there are loads of people like me who have to use Ubuntu, but for whom Unity is so broken that it impedes usability. If I could, I'd move back to 10.04.

I would have considered donating if the donation page was in place for 10.04 .. because it helped me get my job done. Now, I'm just trying to figure out ways to get off of Ubuntu.

I happen to like Unity... but even if I didn't I could easily swap it out for GNOME, KDE, or some other user interface and still use Ubuntu under the hood. I'm just saying, "remove Unity" is already an option and it's free.

Why do people hate Unity so much? My only real complaint is that the launcher is on the side, not the bottom. Once I finally figured out how to use the Ubuntu button after my first installation of 12.04, it was just to easy to navigate as Gnome 2.x and KDE.

There's a hate for every interface. Nothing yet designed as been able to match everybody's style or workflow habits. A lot the criticisms specific to Unity are lack of customization, relatively incomplete multi-monitor support, problems with hardware acceleration, taking issue with the "lenses" design, etc. Some of these are actively being addressed as new versions roll out, but you can't use a "potential" desktop environment, only what's actually shipping today. And ever since Unity was made the default interface, there has been problems switching to the contemporary Gnome alternatives (i.e. Ubuntu ships a different version of some dependency or something is configured just differently enough to keep Gnome 3 from running). The general opinion in the anti-Unity camp seems to be that it's not mature, not sufficiently flexible, and being handled in a ham-fisted fashion.

Don't use Ubuntu but don't have a problem with forking over a few bucks. Amazon links...not as enthused.

Any contributions & help are always good if paid in cash or kind. As long as the help is legal & ethical it is always welcome.

Why should our favorite OS's benefactor (Astronaut/ Cosmonaut & empowering Juggernaut) Mark be the only one to pay? We should make it as easy as possible for others who want to pay by facilitating efforts.

I also strongly recommend the free manual “Getting Started with Ubuntu 12.04” http://ubuntu-manual.org/ be made available with the 12.10 download. Please have it on the same webpage. Although this Manual is for the 12.04 version of Ubuntu, I feel most points will apply.

Add a 'Remove Unity' option for donations, and I'll believe you.. and, I'll donate .. and, Canonical will make tonnes of cash. I'd imagine that there are loads of people like me who have to use Ubuntu, but for whom Unity is so broken that it impedes usability. If I could, I'd move back to 10.04.

I would have considered donating if the donation page was in place for 10.04 .. because it helped me get my job done. Now, I'm just trying to figure out ways to get off of Ubuntu.

I happen to like Unity... but even if I didn't I could easily swap it out for GNOME, KDE, or some other user interface and still use Ubuntu under the hood. I'm just saying, "remove Unity" is already an option and it's free.

I'm glad for you.

I like the look of Unity just fine, it's really the slew of bugs and obvious missing features which drive me insane. Fundamental parts of the GUI are broken. There's no excuse for releasing an LTS where the window menus don't display, window buttons are unavailable and icons don't respond to clicks.

Gnome 3 isn't too bad, and of course .. I can find a way to load up some other GUI. But if I've got to hack Mate into the operating environment in order to use it, why would I bother using Ubuntu? If someone doesn't use Gnome3 or Unity, why bother with Ubuntu?

That's what I'm talking about in regards to Unity. It's alienated a large portion of the user base, and only because it's been rushed out the door without a migration path. if it works for you, you're set. If it doesn't work for you, the next logical step is Mint. Canonical has done a brilliant job of turning Ubuntu into a nearly mainstream operating environment. Now, it looks like Canonical is taking a swan dive off of the Unity podium.

Add a 'Remove Unity' option for donations, and I'll believe you.. and, I'll donate .. and, Canonical will make tonnes of cash. I'd imagine that there are loads of people like me who have to use Ubuntu, but for whom Unity is so broken that it impedes usability. If I could, I'd move back to 10.04.

I would have considered donating if the donation page was in place for 10.04 .. because it helped me get my job done. Now, I'm just trying to figure out ways to get off of Ubuntu.

I happen to like Unity... but even if I didn't I could easily swap it out for GNOME, KDE, or some other user interface and still use Ubuntu under the hood. I'm just saying, "remove Unity" is already an option and it's free.

I'm glad for you.

I like the look of Unity just fine, it's really the slew of bugs and obvious missing features which drive me insane. Fundamental parts of the GUI are broken. There's no excuse for releasing an LTS where the window menus don't display, window buttons are unavailable and icons don't respond to clicks.

Really? Does that happen with all window menus, buttons, and icons, or just some? Just curious if I can recreate the problem.

PayPal only won't be getting anything from me, if they had a non-PayPal option I would welcome this more. Good for them for asking to "pay what you think Ubuntu is worth" option. I think a lot of sites should do this.

"The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more."

They're probably using PayPal because it handles different currencies much more easily and hassle-free than many American banks or credit card companies (I found this out first hand while trying to donate to a charity that only took Euros). PayPal sometimes has an option to simply pay with your credit card, without setting up an account and being subject to all the usual PayPal pants-on-headedness. Haven't checked to see if that option is available in this case.

"The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more."

So pretty meaningless...

Exactly. But for some reason I have seen numerous articles about the "top five Linux distributions" or whatever, based entirely on the DistroWatch numbers.

Seriously, what is people's problem with Unity? Personally, I like my OS to have a GUI that actually looks decent and is reletively easy to use. The bars at the top and bottom of the Gnome desktop made me feel like my computer was in some sort of box and all I had was this little peep hole to see it through. Unity is pretty simple to use and doesn't look like it's stuck in 1999. And the beauty of linux is that if you don't like something, you are welcome and even encouraged to use something else.

What size monitor do you have? For the top and bottom panels (which by the way were really easy to remove/modify) to take up a large amount of space I'd have to assume tiny. I can see a use for Unity on such screens, but for 20+ inches, it's just a pain, and nothing else.

They've copied almost every single thing I hated about the OSX UI (like linking menus to a screen, not the window, what the hell is that about?) and much worse, they've made it impossible to run Gnome as it was. I had spent a lot of time modifying the default Gnome 2 to be precisely how I wanted it, now, not only can I not do that by default, but I simply can't do it at all. Gnome 2 doesn't work in anymore and Gnome Classic simply doesn't allow for the customisations I had and is a damned buggy piece of **** excuse for a Gnome 2 replacement. By all means, offer Unity, but why did they have to screw up my perfectly functioning, carefully tailored UI in the process?

They're probably using PayPal because it handles different currencies much more easily and hassle-free than many American banks or credit card companies (I found this out first hand while trying to donate to a charity that only took Euros). PayPal sometimes has an option to simply pay with your credit card, without setting up an account and being subject to all the usual PayPal pants-on-headedness. Haven't checked to see if that option is available in this case.

I don't care why they are using them. It goes against free speech to use PayPal since they blocked Wikileaks donations.

Seriously, what is people's problem with Unity? Personally, I like my OS to have a GUI that actually looks decent and is reletively easy to use. The bars at the top and bottom of the Gnome desktop made me feel like my computer was in some sort of box and all I had was this little peep hole to see it through. Unity is pretty simple to use and doesn't look like it's stuck in 1999. And the beauty of linux is that if you don't like something, you are welcome and even encouraged to use something else.

What size monitor do you have? For the top and bottom panels (which by the way were really easy to remove/modify) to take up a large amount of space I'd have to assume tiny. I can see a use for Unity on such screens, but for 20+ inches, it's just a pain, and nothing else.

They've copied almost every single thing I hated about the OSX UI (like linking menus to a screen, not the window, what the hell is that about?) and much worse, they've made it impossible to run Gnome as it was. I had spent a lot of time modifying the default Gnome 2 to be precisely how I wanted it, now, not only can I not do that by default, but I simply can't do it at all. Gnome 2 doesn't work in anymore and Gnome Classic simply doesn't allow for the customisations I had and is a damned buggy piece of **** excuse for a Gnome 2 replacement. By all means, offer Unity, but why did they have to screw up my perfectly functioning, carefully tailored UI in the process?

That Gnome2 does not work anymore is something to take up with the Gnome guys.Sounds like you might want to look at MATE over at the Mint site. Its a Gnome2 fork.Personally I think getting all in an uproar about desktops is really kinda silly. I think one of the great things about Linux is the choices we have. I most definitely do not want Unity on my desktop but I don't care if Ubuntu wants to keep developing it. Someone needs to be making desktops for people who like things I don't.Me? I like Mint/Cinnamon. If you are using Windows or OSX and you don't like the GUI you have grounds to gripe. Neither are very customizable. But, seriously, if you are using Linux and you don't like the GUI you have in front of you you only have yourself to blame. Cuz you have choices up the wazoo.

Add a 'Remove Unity' option for donations, and I'll believe you.. and, I'll donate .. and, Canonical will make tonnes of cash. I'd imagine that there are loads of people like me who have to use Ubuntu, but for whom Unity is so broken that it impedes usability. If I could, I'd move back to 10.04.

I would have considered donating if the donation page was in place for 10.04 .. because it helped me get my job done. Now, I'm just trying to figure out ways to get off of Ubuntu.

I happen to like Unity... but even if I didn't I could easily swap it out for GNOME, KDE, or some other user interface and still use Ubuntu under the hood. I'm just saying, "remove Unity" is already an option and it's free.

I'm glad for you.

I like the look of Unity just fine, it's really the slew of bugs and obvious missing features which drive me insane. Fundamental parts of the GUI are broken. There's no excuse for releasing an LTS where the window menus don't display, window buttons are unavailable and icons don't respond to clicks.

Really? Does that happen with all window menus, buttons, and icons, or just some? Just curious if I can recreate the problem.

Yes .. really

Use compiz config to set the window scaling feature to mouse 2, Scale to change windows (hold mouse, move to new window, release) then move the mouse to the menu bar or try to click on something on the dock. it consistently requires 2 clicks to activate a docked application and the menu bar requires fudgerific black majic to get it to display. Can't recall off the top of my head what happens to the window buttons, but it's similar yet slightly different to the menu bar.

Seriously, what is people's problem with Unity? Personally, I like my OS to have a GUI that actually looks decent and is reletively easy to use. The bars at the top and bottom of the Gnome desktop made me feel like my computer was in some sort of box and all I had was this little peep hole to see it through. Unity is pretty simple to use and doesn't look like it's stuck in 1999. And the beauty of linux is that if you don't like something, you are welcome and even encouraged to use something else.

What size monitor do you have? For the top and bottom panels (which by the way were really easy to remove/modify) to take up a large amount of space I'd have to assume tiny. I can see a use for Unity on such screens, but for 20+ inches, it's just a pain, and nothing else.

They've copied almost every single thing I hated about the OSX UI (like linking menus to a screen, not the window, what the hell is that about?) and much worse, they've made it impossible to run Gnome as it was. I had spent a lot of time modifying the default Gnome 2 to be precisely how I wanted it, now, not only can I not do that by default, but I simply can't do it at all. Gnome 2 doesn't work in anymore and Gnome Classic simply doesn't allow for the customisations I had and is a damned buggy piece of **** excuse for a Gnome 2 replacement. By all means, offer Unity, but why did they have to screw up my perfectly functioning, carefully tailored UI in the process?

I run Unity on my netbook and like it. What you say about it being better for small screens sounds right. However, I have no problem whatsoever switching to the latest Gnome whenever I wish, although I don't really make a lot of customisations to Gnome. Also, I may be wrong but I don't think Canonical is really to blame for any customisation issues with Gnome.

After witnessing raves or praises of Linux Mint w/Cinnamon here I was quick to track down the new (to me) distro. I spent hours downloading the 64-bit version, reading comments, advice pages and pdf's. A month ago the motherboard of this computer finally melted and had to be replaced with something newer. What I acquired and screwed down was a secondhand AMD Athalon 64 x2 mo-bo for cheap $$. My purchases generally lag quite far behind the hyped up "state of the art", and I'm not ashamed to admit it. The motherboard was new enough to require SATA CD/DVD ROMs. Too big a file for a CD, I could not burn the Mint ISO to DVD at the time for lack of media. What I did instead was to burn the ISO onto a USB key using a Universal USB Boot loader. The new-used mobo's BIOS however could not be set to load from USB. That lead to a quick solution wherein 'Plop Boot manager' is acquired and then it creates a CD that assist in allowing computers without the BIOS to boot from USB. 'Plop' and 'Universal USB BootLoader' seemed to work but Linux Mint live failed after showing the welcome screen.

A couple of days later and with 10 new clean DVD's to burn upon, I download 'WinMd5Sum' to compare the downloaded ISO checksum with the original from the mirror - and they matched. The 64-bit ISO version was quickly burned and the computer rebooted. What happened was that the DVD version got about as far as the USB version did. Just to the Linux Mint welcome screen before things go kaput and an "Input Not Supported" error begins to float around on the monitor. I really despise computers sometimes. Maybe I am just simple minded. I've no idea if the problem is hardware related, BIOS related or just Linux Mint related. I do have the most recent Ubuntu and openSUSE 32 bit releases; they work. I will continue to stumble on through the fog, but it is frustrating sometimes. Especially with matters Linux.

I think Canonical should have moved to simply asking for donations for Ubuntu a long time ago. Part of the reason I switched to another Linux distribution was that Canonical's schemes for financing Ubuntu were looking less and less realistic to me; furthermore, it seemed like Canonical was becoming less attentive to the users. Donations may be enough to keep Ubuntu going, and may help to direct attention back to the user community.

It's like movies that have flopped based SOLELY on it being a dumb ass name. The name of it needs changed to something more appealing. Your all gonna argue with me about it but truly that would make a big enough difference that would warrant changing it.

I have always felt the same. I think having a more conventional sounding name would help. This is technology. Ubuntu just isn't a name that resonates technology. Trying to tell someone you use Linux is hard enough. Then add "Ubuntu" on top of it. You lose anybody but people like Ars users.

Of course there's room to disagree on whether we *like* the name, but regarding recognition of the name, you've got it backwards IMO.

Amongst non-geeks that I know, if they recognize Linux at all, they usually seem to recognize Ubuntu as a type of Linux, even if they don't understand distros and etc. Not that they don't also recognize other distro names occasionally, but if I had to pick one distro name that had the greatest possibility of being recognized by non-geeks, I'd put my money on Ubuntu without question.